If there is one thing I love about my close circle of friends is that we are all frugal. Not one of us turns our nose up at second hand things. We are all open to things being gifted, things that are coming from second hand shops, from re-hab centers and from farm sales.

While you do need to be careful these days, some of our local second hand shops have over the past few years gone in a bad way..  you must be careful..

Example.. At my local shop (which we call the church basement) a pair of jeans will cost your 2 dollars at their regular price and a full suit(pants, jackets, shirt and tie) will cost you 15.. but they have sales regular.. 2 for 1 or a 1 for all pants or shirts or dresses or whatever for this week and least 4 times a year they do bag sales.. everything you can fit in a large cloth bag for 5 dollars.

However in the bigger towns they have more known shops and in those ones, its not uncommon now to find jeans for 10 to 15 to 30 dollars for labels.. per pair.. which means that if you are shopping them, it only works for you in two ways,  you are fashion aware and you want to wear the 200 dollar pair of jeans an therefor the 30 is a deal..  or you are in fact frugal and you just want a pair of hard wearing jeans and in that case, sadly(and I do mean SADLY) you can get a pair on sale brand new from places like Walmart for cheaper then you can at the second hand shops in the city.

Home reno’s is pretty close to the same. Yesterday, I was able to get a Solid Hard Wood Door with glass that if you ordered it from Home Depo would be a 300 dollar plus door, even without the handle etc and I was able to pick it up for a mear 15 dollars.. A outstanding savings to say the least. Yes I will need to do a touch of work on it, but its so very minor and its all things I can do myself.

But some of the second hand re-hab centers now can have items for sale that can cost as much or more then the new models will if you are careful, look for lot sales, watch for shop events where they offer discounts and so forth.

This happened when I was wanting to replace our toilet for a higher seat for my mom who has had a hip replacement, I found them at the re-hab store but they wanted more then I paid for a brand new one.  So you really need to learn your prices and cherry pick in both ways.

On a side note, the second half of the roof is 90 percent done and I am so pleased.. no leaks at all on the other side either, the attic itself is perfectly dry and looks great, and I was able to reuse the roofing vents as they matched and fit the holes perfectly as they were undamaged when take on and put back on.

It was wonderful news indeed that the roof was in such great shape under what you could see with your eyes. A very good thing indeed.